Daily Archives: September 6, 2018

If you think that only illegal aliens need to be concerned about Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”), then as an employer, you have not been paying attention in 2018, when ICE has clearly put businesses in the crosshairs with compliance audits and enforcement raids.

Take, for example, a raid conducted by ICE in small town Tennessee in April 2018. The Southeastern Provision meatpacking plant reportedly employed at least 104 undocumented immigrants at the time of the surprise raid. The company hired most of these without requiring the employees to complete the required I-9 forms and without making them provide documents showing their identities and authorization to work legally in the United States. To make matters more felonious, these workers were paid in cash each week and not reported on the company’s payroll tax reports.

Last month, the owner of that Southeastern Provision meatpacking plant agreed to a plea bargain in federal court on charges of tax evasion, wire fraud and employing undocumented immigrants. The owner has not been sentenced to prison yet, but he has already agreed to pay at least $1,296,183 to the IRS in restitution.

Similar worksite raids have escalated dramatically under the Trump administration and are happening all over the country. On August 28, a trailer manufacturer located near Paris, Texas, faced one of the largest immigration raids in recent history, when 159 of its approximately 500 employees were arrested by ICE. Because that Texas company, Load Trail, was fined $445,000 four years ago for hiring dozens of undocumented workers, one could reasonably expect the employer to also face jail time and restitution requirements for a pattern and practice of breaking the immigration laws.